I know it’s been a few months since I last wrote about hard-boiled detectives so I feel the need again to fill my self imposed quota of sermonising.
Ever since seeing L.A. Confidential in 1999 at the tender age of 12 I've been a James Ellroy fan, although I didn't know it at the time. It took me a few years of maturity to realise that one of my favourite films was written by one of my soon to be favourite authors. Maybe, like Ellroy’s obsession with red headed women after his mother’s murder, my own obsession with detective novels was born out of the murders on his pages. Who knows, I'm not a doctor.
So when I heard that Ellroy was releasing his first book in five years, Perfidia, I knew I needed to feed my addiction. Simply by the title I knew that I was going to be in for a treat. As the back cover lets you know, Perfidia is Spanish for Perfidy, as in a deliberate breach of faith or trust; faithlessness; treachery. Boy did this book live up to its title. As per standard Ellory tale, every single character is out for their own gain, no matter who they have to cut a deal with. For the longest time I couldn’t decide which character I’m supposed to be rooting for, but then realised that it didn’t matter. All the characters were terrible people but I was too swept up in the intrigue to care. Not even big shiny America comes out as a clean hero, which Nazi loving cops and kids who kick people in the street because they have different skin colour and are "the enemy".
Not only is this a cracker of a mystery, the depth of historical accuracy is astounding. Famous faces and events are jammed packed into the twenty odd days that this story covers. At almost 700 pages, the story begins just a day before the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the inevitable entrance of America into the Second World War. (I know, I know, you’re thinking “Who needs to read another novel set in WWII? I’ve seen Saving Private Ryan, I've read The Book Thief, it’s all been done.”) Well not this way it hasn’t. Ellroy focuses his view on race relations on the home front and the treatment of Japanese American’s during those first days of the War. It delves deep into the deals cut behind closed doors and the way regular people turned on their neighbour at the drop of a coin. All things most American focused stories try and sweep under the carpet. The victors write the history books as the the phrase goes. So it comes as a breath of fresh air to have people talk about the bad sides of the good guys for once.
Another fantastic aspect of this novel is something especially for the James Ellroy fanboys like myself. This novel marks the first book in Ellroy’s second L.A. Quartet! (I’ll wait for the wild whooping and hollering to die down from the crowd.) For those of you who have never had the pleasure of coming across James Ellory, his first L.A. Quartet consists of The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. All these books are stand alone stories but span across Los Angeles in the years 1947-58 and share a wide range of the same characters. He also wrote the Underworld USA Trilogy that spans across 1958-73 and focuses on all of America. So here's where the whooping and hollering comes in, this second L.A. Quartet is going to take characters from these previous books and cover what happened to them during the war. Bam! Drop the mic. Walk off stage. Suffice to say, I am incredibly excited for the next three books in the Quartet because Perfidia really kicks it off.
That being said, if you are just hopping on to the James Ellroy train now, this is a great place to start. Perfidia is just a lyrical and hard hitting as any of his previous books. Plus you can start at the beginning of the chronological life of these characters and watch them struggle through the ups and downs their lives as they develop through all of the other books. I envy you unknown reader, and your hypothetical chance to experience it all for the first time.
So with that, I call on you to go forth and spread the good word of James Ellroy and dive into the intrigue and terrible face of humanity that is Perfidia.
